3 ARRESTED IN FALN PRISON BREAK PLOT

William B. Crawford JrCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Federal authorities in Chicago have arrested three persons and are seeking six others on charges of plotting a daring, potentially violent prison escape of Oscar Lopez-Rivera, a leader of the FALN Puerto Rican independence group who is serving a 55-year prison sentence.

The arrest warrants were based on a 23-page FBI affidavit in which an unidentified agent described in detail the labyrinthine plot in which the defendants were to use hand grenades, plastic explosives, bulletproof vests, blasting caps and a helicopter to carry out Lopez-Rivera`s escape from the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan.

Lopez-Rivera, 43, was convicted in 1981 of seditious conspiracy and bombing violence by a federal jury in Chicago. He was transferred from Leavenworth to the maximum security federal prison in Downstate Marion shortly before the arrests were announced Thursday.

According to the affidavit, the helicopter was to drop into the prison recreation yard at Leavenworth in August, 1985, pick up Lopez-Rivera and a second inmate, identified as Grailing Brown, a convicted murderer, and fly them to a prearranged place three miles from the prison. From there, the escapees were to be driven away by Lopez-Rivera`s ''Chicago group.''

The elaborate plan was revealed Thursday by U.S. Atty. Anton Valukas and Edward Hegarty, FBI agent in charge of the Chicago office.

The prosecution will occur in Chicago because many of the principal elements of the alleged scheme--phone calls and meetings--took place in the federal Northern District of Illinois.

Those arrested Thursday were identified as James Delgado, 33, of 2126 W. 52d Pl., a counselor at Northeastern Illinois University; Dora Lopez, 35, of 2724 W. Potomac Ave., Oscar Lopez-Rivera`s sister-in-law, who is employed at the Cathedral Shelter in Chicago; and Viola Salgado, 39, of 2112 W. Thomas St., a paralegal at the West Town Community Law Office.

The three are being held without bond in the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center on grounds that they represent a danger to the community. They are charged with conspiracy to effect a prison escape and to transport explosives across state lines.

Marks and Willmott also are charged with conspiracy to effect a prison escape and transportation of explosives across state lines. Sokolower, McBride, Block and Shain are being sought as material witnesses in connection with the alleged escape plans.

The FALN is a Spanish acronym for Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional, or the armed forces of national liberation. The group, active mostly in New York City and Chicago, has claimed responsibility for 102 bombings and incendiary attacks since 1974, mostly in public buildings and gathering places.

According to the FBI affidavit, the prison escape plot was hatched in early 1985 when Brown gave an undercover informant a handwritten note that listed the explosives and other materials Lopez-Rivera wanted to pull off his escape.

The closest any of the defendants came to bringing the scheme to fruition was in June, 1985, when one FALN member, identified in the affidavit as Marks, paid $5,000 in cash for plastic explosives to an undercover FBI agent. The explosives were phony.

Marks, who was driving a rental car, met an undercover agent in a remote hunting preserve near Baton Rouge, La., where he purchased the phony plastic explosives that were contained in an ice chest, according to the affidavit.

While details of how the FBI came across the planned breakout were sketchy, the affidavit makes it clear that agents and local law enforcement agencies from Chicago and around the country were acting together and monitoring the alleged plot from the outset.

The FALN`s leadership has been depleted in recent years with the convictions of Lopez-Rivera and more than a dozen others in both state and federal courts, mostly in Chicago.

At his trial before a jury and former U.S. District Judge Thomas McMillen, Lopez-Rivera refused to defend himself against the seditious conspiracy charges, opting instead to portray himself as a valiant freedom fighter and characterizing the trial as the evil work of a colonial empire.

The affidavit cites a conversation between Lopez-Rivera and ''a source,'' which could only have occurred inside the prison. The affidavit also notes that Freddie Mendez, a former FALN leader turned government informant, had provided essential information, tipping authorities to be on the lookout for an attempted breakout.

Mendez, also convicted for his FALN activities, told authorities after he entered the witness protection program that the FALN had put together a manuscript known as ''The Book,'' which served as a manual on how to break out of prison.

Mendez, in protective custody, has testified as a star witness at several FALN trials, including that of Lopez-Rivera.

Four other self-acknowledged members of the FALN last year were convicted on a variety of charges, including charges that they also had plotted to break Lopez-Rivera out of Leavenworth. During the trial, prosecutors introduced evidence showing that they had obtained detailed schematic drawings of the Leavenworth penitentiary. All were convicted.